AJAX in Rails - doing simple looping to update information when available

Question

I am trying to get put out a simple site, which would pool the database every few seconds and update the information on the page dynamicly, when theres something new inserted.

I am farily new to ruby, but I understand the whole concept of RJS, link_to_function and soforth. The question is, what is the best way how to implement some kind of simple loop, which would run after the page is loaded and update the DOM if there is something new to display.

Thanks in advance for any tips!

Answer 1

checkout rails prototype helper method: periodically_call_remote

http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionView/Helpers/PrototypeHelper.html#M001647